So the key had been turned in the lock by the exposure of the lie of independent self through the law. This was the great value of the law for him and us. The claims of the law exposed the lie of his supposed ability to respond to it as though independent. The other lie now exposed to his newborn self was that sin’s power still had its right and presence in him. No. “Dead to sin” in Christ and now alive in Christ to live by the Spirit.

As simple as that when the law had done its Romans 7 work by forcing Paul to find that there never was a Paul-self who could obey that law; and this, his Arabian revelation of the body death of Jesus representing us – and body resurrection – took Paul right out of Romans 7 into Romans 8 liberty. Then he shares what follows as the fruit of that liberty – outlined in Rom 8 – in the Spirit-operated life, in the glory of the family relationship with the Father and the Son, the sharing of the eternal inheritance, and the present prolonged period in which we still have the full impact of the consequences of the Fall on our humanity and world conditions, and live the life of overcoming faith, as Jesus Himself did.

The sufferings of this present life give us our great constant opportunities for the conquests of faith in every kind of adverse condition. In the walk and warfare of faith we are experiencing new ways of proving the goodness of God in all kinds of deliverances, though sometimes the highest is that martyrdom and extremity of suffering in the faith of the resurrection, as it says in Hebrews 11:35-38, “of whom the world was not worthy”.

And in all these the watching hungry world is seeing the inner victories outwardly demonstrated in peace, joy, hope, faith, and love for our enemies, by which Christ is manifested in our bodies “whether by life or by death,” and countless others have been inspired to follow the same way.